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The Auction Collective
Online live auction platform and art showcase
I was brought in to work with The Auction Collective by their development agency, with the task of overhauling their web design while also designing a new online platform for their auctions. They run accessible art auctions, and previously these were casual, fun in-person events, however as the pandemic hit they needed to bring the business online. I worked closely with founder Tom on all aspects of the UX and UI design, to bring this platform to life. It has since hosted many auctions, with some prestigious lots, and has been wildly successful for The Auction Collective who have seen massive growth.
The project began with an analysis of their userbase, market competitors and key objectives. This was an ambitious business with a lot of different areas to cover. Through workshops with their team we arrived at a sitemap that would fulfil all their needs, while not overwhelming users.
The main event for this site was the actual auction process. I am not an auctioneer, so had to draw from Tom's expertise to understand how the auction works. We needed to create easy to use views not just for those bidding, but also for live behind the scenes control of the lots by the bidding clerks, and appropriate views for the auctioneer to follow while conducting auctions.
Wireframing played a key role as we refined the UX design, so that we could quickly prototype the experience and examine the user flows for all involved.
"Professional, creative and an industry expert—not only did Josh help us achieve our vision, but he also brought a huge amount of additional design expertise and knowledge of the latest UX trends and best practices."
With a site of this size, looking to grow significantly, we needed to establish a strong, reusable design language and a component based design system. This would ensure the platform and marketing site were scalable. Below shows the beginnings of that style guide and an early version of the home page.
Another significant challenge was making sure that all aspects of the bidding process were mobile friendly. Mobile was very important, making up a large percentage of traffic, and we needed buyers to be confident in the platform on any device. I addressed this by making sure each stage of the process only had one clear primary action, copy was succinct and easy to comprehend, and colour was used consistently to highlight success, error or pending statuses.
There were opportunities to create engaging layouts and flows across the site, such as on their 'viewing rooms'. I focussed on providing distraction free layouts that would allow the artwork to shine.
- 88% Increase in new visitors
- 20% Increase in organic traffic
- 1000+ Sales across the platform
- 12% Bounce rate reduction
I enjoyed working directly with Tom on this project, he is an excellent, enthusiastic founder with a lot of genuine expertise in auctions, and it's great to see somebody like him start a successful online venture. I feel I was able to compliment this with my UX and web knowledge as he started out on his journey in the digital world. Helping the business adapt during the pandemic was particularly rewarding.
The figures above give some idea of the initial impact of the work we did together, but really the success is reflected in the huge growth of The Auction Collective. Tom has now translated this into a new venture with platform Indy Auction, that opens up some of the same software capabilities to other people looking to run auctions, and continues to see fantastic adoption and growth.